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Black swan

//blæk ˈswɒn// noun

Definitions

Noun

1
Cygnus atratus, a swan with black plumage and a red bill which is endemic to Australia.
"Mankind were wrong, it seems, in concluding that all swans were white: are we also wrong, when we conclude that all men's heads grow above their shoulders, and never below, in spite of the conflicting testimony of the naturalist Pliny? As there were black swans, though civilised people had existed for three thousand years on the earth without meeting with them, may there not also be "men whose heads do grow beneath their shoulders," notwithstanding a rather less perfect unanimity of negative testimony from all observers? Most persons would answer No; it was more credible that a bird should vary in its colour, than that man should vary in the relative position of his principal organs."
2
large Australian swan having black plumage and a red bill wordnet
3
Something believed impossible or not to exist, especially if an example is subsequently found; also, something extremely rare; a rara avis. figuratively
"I do but ſpeake in the perſon of Demetrius, & vnder Hippolita ſhadovv vvhat I intend to the rare, and neuer enough vvondred at Moſpa, the black ſvvan of beauty, & madg-hovvled of admiration."
4
A rare and hard-to-predict event with major consequences. also, attributive, figuratively, specifically
"A small number of Black Swans explain almost everything in our world, from the success of ideas and religions, to the dynamics of historical events, to elements of our own personal lives. […] Fads, epidemics, fashion, ideas, the emergence of art genres and schools. All follow these Black Swan dynamics."

Etymology

From Middle English blak swan, calqued from a Latin quotation from Satire VI (written late 1st century – early 2nd century B.C.E.) of the Roman poet Juvenal: “Rara avis in terris, nigroque simillima cygno [a bird as rare upon the earth as a black swan]!”. Equivalent to black + swan. Sense 2.1 (“something believed impossible or not to exist”) is from the fact that all swans were thought to have white plumage until black swans were discovered in Australia in the 17th century by Dutch explorers. Sense 2.2 (“rare and hard-to-predict event”) was popularized by the Lebanese-American author Nassim Nicholas Taleb (born 1960) in his book The Black Swan: The Impact of the Highly Improbable (2007): see the quotation.

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